EVGA SLI 6800GS Review :: Introduction

NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jen-Hsun Huang, Chris Malachowski, and Jeffery Fischer, three ex-SGI engineers who had a vision of a graphics card company. It's hard to imagine today that NVIDIA was only around for 13 years, harder to imagine in 2000 that the company was a small one with less than 200 employees and revenue of less than $100 million a quarter. Today, NVIDIA is one of the largest fables semiconductor companies with revenue of over $2 Billion and over 2000 employees.

EVGA is a relative newcomer to the video card manufacturer scheme. They manufacture NVIDIA based video cards exclusively. The company is known for their excellent service with a Lifetime warranty, a Step-Up program that is unmatched in the industry today and toll-free technical support available to registered users of retail EVGA cards. They have recently begun offering motherboards and accessories as options. They also have a major share of the retail and e-tail market here in the USA.

Side view of card

NVIDIA announced their NV4x architecture in April of 2004. It is a little hard to believe that its been almost 2 years since the NV4x architecture was announced. NV4x formed the basis for NVIDIA based cards including the 6800 Ultra, the 6800GT, the 6800, the 6600GT, the 6600, the 6200 and the 6200 with Turbo Cache. Also part of this family is the integrated graphics of the GeForce 6150 and the mobile versions of the cards. Today I'm reviewing the 6800GS from EVGA, in single and SLI mode.